Blue on Blue: A home perched on a weather-beaten Lake Erie site
A brawny home reflects its rugged setting
Indigo House, Lake Erie, by Cindy Rendely Architexture. The 3,380-square-foot structure has been made to sync with its high, exposed, weather-beaten site. There is nothing pretty or sentimentally rustic about it. The roof is flat, and the strict overall composition is a modernist matter of clearly articulated oblong or bevelled volumes bundled together.Tom Arban
The modernist simplicity that characterizes the exterior is echoed in the interior. The space is divided, generally speaking, into three areas. The two sleeping wings are connected by a link containing the living room and kitchen, the one sharply distinguished from the other.Tom Arban
The living room is casual, relaxed; it even has a short flight of bleacher seating for the expansive entertaining the family likes to do. The kitchen, in contrast, is tightly organized around a built-in dining table.Tom Arban
One of the wings, featuring an en-suite bathroom off a spacious bedroom with tall windows on two sides, has been set apart for the adult in this single-parent family of four. The other sleeping wing, elevated and cantilevered out over the front side of the house, is accessed by means of a handsome riserless staircase framed by thick slabs of clear glass. This zone comprises bathrooms and three small bedrooms, one for each of the three nearly grown children, and a lounge overlooking Lake Erie and glassed in on three sides.Tom Arban
Deep blue brick and painted aluminum cladding combines with the solid geometry to give Indigo House a general air of toughness and resilience. This is architecture that stands its ground in a dramatic landscape – carefully, without making a great fuss about itself, but forthrightly.Tom Arban
Ms. Rendely pegged building costs at about $325 a square foot.Tom Arban
Tom Arban